Brando & The Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac, Matt Dillon, and Me

Some years ago I had the pleasure of participating in an all star tribute CD to Jack Kerouac entitled Kicks, Joy, Darkness for the Rykodisc label. Matt Dillon brought me into the studio, where we recorded Mexican Loneliness, (plus one or two other Kerouac pieces that were included as bonus tracks for the special Japanese issue).
The other participants on the project reads like a who’s who of pop & underground culture- Jeff Buckley, Patti Smith, Johnny Depp, Lydia Lunch, Lawrence Ferlinghetti ,Hunter S. Thompson, Steven Tyler, Michael Stipe, Eddie Vedder, et. al. Click Here To Link To Order.

Dig This Crazy Beany Boy & Cecil Beatnik Parody Cartoon

I was super psyched to find Beany & Cecil on YouTube recently. They were some of my favorite cartoons as a child and as it was a very sad day when they left the airwaves some forty years ago.

This particular episode is borderline genius, parodying beat generation culture of the 1950's.
Among the many clever puns are The Hungry I-Land (the hungry i was a beat coffehouse in San Francisco), Mort Soil (Mort Sahl was a political satirist who is still alive & kickin), Lenny's Spruce Tree (comedian Lenny Bruce), The Kingston Tree-O (Kingston Trio-popular folk group who made a live record at the Hungry i) ~like cool daddy-o!